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Imagine the Unimaginable

In a nutshell: Why not do something that pays more, is more interesting, and takes less time than your current job? That seems impossible, but maybe it’s not. The same goes for that really big role. Why not you? How hard could it be? The person doing it now is also a mortal. Setting your sights on the unimaginable will give you impetus for change and getting there.

The Biggest Job

When you talk to people who have really big jobs, they will often say that before they took on the role they weren’t sure they could do it.

“When you’re looking further up the ladder, you always think, ‘What is it that they’ve got that I haven’t?’ Well, there’s not anything. Probably just experience and confidence,” said Jenny Scott, executive director at The Bank of England.

If you have the experience, why not apply for that senior role? You can quickly find out if others think you’re qualified. You won’t get it, if they don’t. If you have doubts about your own ability, why not trust theirs? Trust them to make a good decision.

A former colleague was approached by her boss to take on a more senior role. She baulked. She couldn’t imagine taking on any more responsibility. She had young children and worked a four-day week, which she liked. The current job was demanding and interesting. She really wasn’t looking to make any changes.

Her boss persisted. He said the role could be adapted and done in four days. He thought she was the best person for the role and wanted her to take a chance. She still hesitated.

She was flattered, but when she looked at who her new peers would be, she felt daunted. These were people she had looked up to, people to whom she had always been more junior, and now she would be a peer?

But her boss would not be dissuaded, and, after giving her plenty of time to think about it and several more encouraging conversations, he finally persuaded her and she decided to give it a go.

It went well. So well, in fact, that a couple of years later she was tapped again and asked to be chief of staff for a new CEO. She maintained the four-day work week throughout.

A good friend gave me some very useful advice many years ago. She said that the job that appears daunting and too hard will never be as hard again as it is in the beginning. The first week or month will be the hardest, and it will gradually get easier. The second week will be a little less difficult, the second month less hard than the first, and so on.

It’s almost like a law of physics that it can’t remain new indefinitely. And by becoming more familiar, it becomes easier, by definition.

The other thing that becomes apparent when you take a big job is that those colleagues you used to admire from afar are only human. That’s what my former colleague discovered when she became a peer of colleagues who had long been her senior. She even discovered that some of them were not as talented as she had assumed. Weaknesses and foibles became clearer with closer quarters and she realized that she was in fact every inch their peer.

Once you take a significantly senior role in an organization, it can often be quite eye opening at how poorly run things are, jarring with the perception you held as an outsider. If you always assumed there were smarter people somewhere making better decisions, it can be a shock to discover that’s not the case and in fact you have a lot to contribute to making things go better.

Perhaps that’s why they hired you?

Check Out the Competition

One way to determine whether you’re ready for a major step up in career is to check out the competition. Survey the market and see if you’re on par with people who are in the positions you aspire to hold.

The easiest way to check the market is to apply to more-senior positions and see what happens.

Dust off your resume, have a reliable friend take a look at it and then look for open positions. Look further afield than your city or country. Check out listings in publications like The Economist and online vacancy sections of large organizations and companies. If you’re intention is to scope the market, rather than actually make a move now, going further afield is a good move. It’s less likely that people will know you and that your current employer finds out you’re looking elsewhere. This is not the time to post on LinkedIn, for example.

If you are called to interview, do your best, see if they move you forward to the next round and then pull out if you’re not interested in actually taking the role.

Many positions are found via recruiters, also known as headhunters. You should have a relationship with a couple of recruiters and be in irregular contact with them. They tend to stay in their industry but move from firm to firm, so staying in touch is important.

Recruiters work on a transactional basis and have little or no interest in you unless you fit the profile of a role they are currently filling. That’s why you need to apply to vacant roles. You want to meet them or speak with them and build a relationship so that you’re in their Rolodex (can we still say that?) for the future. When a new role comes up, they comb through that Rolodex for prospective candidates and that’s where they find you!

Applying to vacant positions to see if you get called to interview achieves a number of things:

1. You refresh your resume and take stock of your experience.
2. You get outside of your bubble to see opportunities beyond your own company.
3. You get a sense of your value in the market at a point in time.
4. You can compare your remuneration against the market and see if you’re being fairly paid.

Other ways to check out if you’re ready for a much larger role is to talk to people in those roles. Ask senior people in your organization, and among your friends and neighbors, for 30 minutes of their time to talk about what they do and how they got there.

Most people will be flattered if you say you admire them and are trying to better understand what it takes to be in a senior role. Invite them for coffee and listen carefully.

Here are some questions you can ask:

1. Why do you think you’ve been so successful in your career?
2. What are some of the people, incidents or decisions that led to this point?
3. What are your secrets to getting a lot done?
4. What do you wish you had known earlier in life?

If you’ve been in your company for a long time, you need to examine if that’s working against your professional progress. There is a phenomenon I’ve noticed of people who effectively “grow up” in an organization, meaning they join at a junior or mid-level and spend some of their most formative professional years at the same institution.

Even if they progress well, it’s unlikely to be at the same pace as if they had moved around among different companies. That’s not necessarily a negative; if you enjoy your work, your colleagues and the work is interesting and rewarding, there are plenty of reasons to stay somewhere despite a lack of rapid promotion.

Where it’s a problem is when your colleagues or members of the senior team still see you as that junior person who first joined and don’t view you as they would if you showed up as a new hire today.

This happens particularly frequently to women. Their colleagues still regard them as the person who joined 10 years ago, despite the considerable experience and skill they’ve accumulated in the intervening years. Very often, women themselves don’t realize their increased value because they are seeing an inaccurate reflection in how their colleagues view them.

That’s why a reality check and testing the waters externally can be so valuable. You don’t know your own worth until you check the market!

Find Role Models

We’ve talked about having sponsors and mentors, and the difference between them. Sponsors can actually give you new roles and take you with them to other companies. Mentors encourage and advise you.

Role models provide another form of inspiration and ideas.

The definition of a role model, according to Webster’s dictionary is, “A person who serves as an example of the values, attitudes, and behaviors associated with a role. For example, a father is a role model for his sons. Role models can also be persons who distinguish themselves in such a way that others admire and want to emulate them.”¹

When you talk with successful people, they will often talk about their own role models. Oftentimes, this is a parent or their first boss. Very often, the role model wasn’t as conventionally successful as the person they provided inspiration to.

Adam Bryant has a weekly column in the New York Times called “Corner Office.” In it, he profiles leaders across the United States in both corporate and nonprofit areas. One recurring theme is the important impact a parent had as a role model for many of the leaders profiled. The column is a worthwhile read for professional inspiration and to see the variety of role models for different leaders.

I worked with Dr. Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani doctor and head of the United Nations agency for reproductive health, UNFPA, in the mid-1990s. She was an extraordinarily courageous and successful leader of that agency and, at 87 years of age, still works for the United Nations as a Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General.

Nafis credited her father with being an important influence on her career because of his support and encouragement that she get a good education. For a middle-class girl growing up in India and subsequently Pakistan, that was not the norm. Marriage and family were considered the extent of a girl’s ambitions. She would go on to become a medical doctor and ultimately lead a UN agency that reshaped the global discussion about the rights of women and adolescents to control their fertility and plan their families.

You may not be as fortunate to have someone encouraging you from an early age to fulfill your potential. I am reminded of a man in his late 50s whom I met recently who told me he was not good at having role models or mentors because he had lost his father early in life and therefore wasn’t used to being given advice. He admired other colleagues who did seek out others for advice. I guess he had never considered the possibility that their fathers may have given poor advice or none at all, but they persisted in finding mentors nonetheless.

Regardless of whether you grew up with someone you admired and who encouraged you, there are plenty of ways you can acquire role models to whom you can look up to. Here are some suggestions:

1. Read biographies of famous people. Notice their characteristics. Look for behaviors that contributed to their success. If you enjoy history, go back in time and read the lives of eminent people. If you want something that resonates more with modern life, you’re spoiled for choice in recent biographies of leaders in business and public life.
2. Look for role models in your workplace. Who seems to have things sorted? Who is successful professionally and also seems to be a decent human being with a life?
3. Look among your neighbors and friends. Your role model doesn’t need to be a titan of industry or former head of state. Learn more about what your friends and neighbors have done professionally. You may be surprised by what you learn.

If you can spend time with potential role models, so much the better. Ask them about their philosophy or most important values. What do they hold dear? Inquire about the habits they think made them productive and successful.

Post a picture of your role model or role models above your desk. It’s helpful have a visual prompt of the person who inspires you to seep into your subconscious.

I’m a great fan of Theodore Roosevelt and keep a picture of him and the text of “The Man in the Arena,” an excerpt from his most famous speech, “Citizenship in a Republic,” ² on my fridge. His speech praises the person taking action and trying to achieve their goals—“the man in the arena”—rather than those who stand on the sidelines criticizing and second guessing, “those cold and timid souls.” I don’t necessarily read it every time I reach for the milk, but I’m sure his image and words have a positive, encouraging impact.

Entrepreneurship

Those who follow the siren call of entrepreneurship are among the bravest of souls, in my opinion. I confess to being biased on this score as an entrepreneur myself.

Entrepreneurship is on the rise after several years of declining numbers following the global financial crisis of 2008.

Globally, around 12% of the working-age population, that’s 320 million people, are engaged in early-stage entrepreneurship in the G20 countries.³ Many of those are in China and India. Entrepreneurship in the United States is slowly regaining the ground lost because of the financial crisis, but the rate of new businesses being created had been slowing down well before the crisis.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the share of private firms less than a year old has dropped from more than 12% during much of the 1980s to only about 8% since 2010. And the trend is heading down. The most recent data is for 2014, which is the second lowest on record, after 2010.⁴ And the share of employees working at start-up businesses is also dropping, from 4% to 2% of private sector jobs.⁵

That bad news does not dissuade those who want to strike out on their own. It also may not cover the growing “gig economy,” which is made up of individuals working freelance or solo. If those individuals don’t register as businesses, they may not be captured by the data.

The lure of entrepreneurship is strong, and while many think about setting up their own business only a tiny minority ever actually does so.

There are a couple of basic models for entrepreneurship. The classic involves setting up a business to meet an identified need and hiring people to help produce the product or service you’re selling. Often the goal is to grow the business as large as possible, and then sell it or hand it down to family members.

The alternative is the solo entrepreneur, often also a consultant. This model relies on the skills of the individual who does not have employees, though he or she may outsource some tasks. In this model, there are no employees to keep on payroll and nothing to sell to someone else. When the person stops working, the business goes away.

At the higher end of the “gig economy,” you’ll find consultants who are more accurately described as entrepreneurs than as “freelancers” or “contractors.”

Despite the gloomy statistics, there are plenty of people willing to make the leap. The greatest attraction is the freedom and autonomy as well as potential to make more money than you would as a salaried employee. While there is more risk, there is also the potential for more reward.

Embracing entrepreneurship means embracing risk, ambiguity and uncertainty. It requires resilience, commitment and plain stubbornness. The few who do make it have these traits. The rewards can be much more meaningful than money.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” —Peter Drucker

If you are considering entrepreneurship, you’ll need the following five things:

1. Talent—You need to have something to offer and to be good at demonstrating its value to others.
2. Market—It’s impossible to truly test a market without actually setting up. People will say anything in a focus group. Do as much due diligence as you can, and if there are others in your market talk to them.
3. Passion—Almost by definition, entrepreneurship is harder than just showing up to work every day. You have to make it count every day and be really committed to your own success.
4. Support—This includes financial and emotional support, but of these two emotional support is the most important. You need people in your corner to rally you when you’re down and who believe in you completely.
5. Urgency—Probably the worst handicap for an entrepreneur is a big, soft safety net. If you don’t have the pressure of making payroll or your mortgage payments, you’ll find it hard to create real momentum quickly.

Forward Motion

Isaac Newton’s first law of physics is sometimes known as the law of inertia.

“An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.”⁶

What this means is that objects tend to keep doing what they are doing. It means there is a natural tendency for objects to resist changes in their state of motion. That’s why it’s also known as the law of inertia. If an object is doing nothing, it will continue to do nothing, unless something comes along to change that.

This applies as well to us as to animate objects! Think about it. It’s often easier to make change when you are forced to by circumstances, an external force. Think of the person who has a heart attack and decides to embrace a healthy diet and exercise, having never done so before. Or the person who loses their job, which they didn’t enjoy, and is then forced to find something different.

That’s the first part of the law, that it takes an external object to move us out of the inertia of our current situation. The second is just as intriguing.

An object in motion will stay in motion, unless impacted by another object. That’s the law of momentum. If we are moving at speed, we can keep going until something stops us.

That has implications for us in terms of what we want to achieve in life. If we get ourselves moving and develop good habits, we should be able to keep going. We may get knocked off course now and then, but the point of Newton’s law is that it is harder to stop us than to start us off in the first place.

Another good maxim in this regard is that it is better to move three things forward a mile than 10 things forward an inch.

We tend to be widely over-optimistic in estimating our own willpower. That’s why New Year’s resolutions and diets rarely work. The very number of things we aim to do better—eat less, save more, go to the gym and so on—reduces our ability to make any real change.

Pick three things you’d like to improve and give yourself a realistic time frame for getting them done, and start making them a habit. It takes an estimated 21 days for a new habit to stick.

Once you’re up and running, you’ll have momentum on your side and a far greater chance of keeping going.

Jot down now the three things you’d most like to change, and start putting the laws of physics in your favor. You’ll be surprised by what you can achieve.